Gawking Goslings

Gawking Goslings

At first, I did not understand what was happening. I was shooting video from the window mount of my Honda, when the goslings started to disappear behind mom. Then mom’s back feathers started to jump around as they were jostling for position under the tent. I started shooting and a head or two would pop up. I was too far away. I stopped shooting and scrambled to add my 1.4x tele-extender, while hoping I was not missing the action. Then I realized that there were grass blades across mom’s face and in all of the wrong places. I started the car, put it into drive, moved forward 2 feet while holding the camera and the 500mm lens in place (it is mounted on the window and door, but, still I did not want to let go), turned off the car, and started shooting again only to realize that the grass blades were still obstructing the view. So once again I started the car, moved forward another few feet, this time without taking my eyes off the viewfinder (and hoping that I was not driving into the ditch). Stopped, started shooting again. Damn, I still needed to move forward another few feet. One last attempt and finally I cleared the grass. Turned off the car, started shooting again

Then it happened. An osprey flew close overhead squeaking its incoming sound on the way to its nest. Four heads popped up to see why mom was suddenly nervously alert.